A Sporting Story – Tiger Woods Might Not Only Be A Great Golfer But Also A Good Guy

Winning is only everything when you care about nothing else. Just wait and see what life gives you when you stop winning.
At this years’ US open Tiger Woods beat Rocco Mediate in a tense play-off. No real news there. What was more interesting was about the Tiger knee. Almost immediately after winning Tiger announced he was finished for the season and going to have surgery on a serious knee injury. Many people had sniped in the months beforehand about this ‘phantom knee’ believing it was a bit of kidology on Tiger’s part, when in fact he has been playing in some pain and at some risk to his chances of a full recovery.

Tiger simply said he didn’t want the knee to be an excuse if he lost, because Rocco Mediate had played fantastic golf and would have made a worthy winner, and nothing should detract from that. The interesting background to this is when he won his first major (The Masters in 1997). Golfers are a pretty self absorbed lot, when they finish a tournament they leave, only waiting around for the winners ceremony if they are directly involved. However, when Tiger went up for his first Green Jacket, there was one senior golfer who has stayed behind to applaud this little piece of history – Rocco Mediate, something Tiger has obviously not forgotten.

When Jack Nicklaus (by most people’s reckoning the greatest golfer of all time) said of Woods after he had won another major “he plays a game with which I am not familiar” he was paying him some compliment. Perhaps as Tiger matures he could also become something more than just a winner.